Bible literacy course in Kentucky has basic flaw | opinion

Recently the Kentucky Department of Education put out a list of 13 “standards” for the Bible literacy course that was approved by the state legislature. I looked over the list where each one invited the public to approve the language or make suggestions for revision. The format did not make it possible for me to write the kind of commentary that I feel needs to be made. There are fundamental flaws with the whole set up that need to be addressed. 

The basic premise for this course as explained by the sponsors of the bill is erroneous. Rep. D.J. Johnson, one of the bill’s sponsors, made this comment about why he and other legislators pushed for this course offering in public schools, “It (the Bible) really did set up the foundation that our founding fathers used to develop documents like the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights. All of these came from principles of the Bible.”  

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If teachers in public schools in this state take the same view as Rep. Johnson, they will be offering our students misinformation that will further cloud the public’s understanding of the founding of this nation and the intent of the people who wrote our founding documents.  

John Adams, in the Preface for his book, "In Defence of the Constitutions of the United States (1787)", summed up the sources used for writing the Constitution this way, “The United States have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature: And if men are not sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their history. Although the detail of the formation of the American governments is at present little known or regarded either in Europe or America, it may hereafter become an object of curiosity. It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had any interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the inspiration of heaven, any more that those at work upon ships or houses, or labouring in merchandize or agriculture: it will for ever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses.”  

The table of contents for Adams’ book lists sources used to create the Constitution. The Bible is not listed.

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Thomas Jefferson wrote a letter in response to Henry Lee in May of 1825 concerning how the Declaration of Independence was written and where the language in it came from. The letter is long, but at the end, Jefferson summed it up with this quote: “… it was intended to be an expression of the american mind, and to give to that expression the proper tone and spirit called for by the occasion. All it’s authority rests then on the harmonising sentiments of the day, whether expressed, in conversations in letters, printed essays or in the elementary books of public right, as Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Sidney, etc.” 

Again, no mention of the Bible as a source for the Declaration of Independence. 

The Federalist Papers, which were written by John Jay, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison (who authored the Bill of Rights), offers us detailed arguments for the importance of passing the Constitution. And in these pages and pages of arguments explaining the rationale behind the contents in the Constitution, not one of the authors mentioned the Bible or Christianity. 

There is no way for our state to monitor all the interpretations of the curriculum guidelines that will be expressed by teachers all over this state. If this course is to be taught correctly, the Kentucky Department of Education should make sure that those guidelines at the very least do not include the false statements made by the politicians who pushed for this course in our public schools. 

Linda Allewalt is a former member of the CJ Forum Fellows. She is a retired science educator and a longtime advocate for separation of church and state.